Books In Review

Religion and American Education

The Religion-Free Classroom

Religion and American Education: Rethinking a National
Dilemma. By Warren A. Nord. University of North Carolina
Press. 481 pp. $49.95.

Reviewed by Elliott Wright

The question here is the hostility of American public education toward
religion. The issue is hardly new, but few scholars approach it as
comprehensively as Warren Nord or are as prepared with a proposal for
addressing at least part of the problem.

Nord's plan for teaching religion as religion under existing First
Amendment jurisprudence will not please everyone who seeks more religion
in the schools. It ignores basic concerns of prayer amendment advocates-
indeed, Nord opposes school prayer. He does provide, however, a design
that could give religion a serious place in public school pedagogy, and
does so as a self-conscious liberal.

What Nord wants is "curricular neutrality" toward religion as a force
both in history and in the "here and now." He envisions not only
instruction on the world's religions, but also respect for religious
claims in the contemporary multicultural mix. He wants religion to be
presented as forcefully as science or economics-and thus goes far beyond
what "teaching about religion" usually means.

Nord would accomplish his goal through special courses and by
persuading, even forcing, educators to acknowledge religion as an
integral part of liberal education. High school students, he says,
should be required to study the world's religions, religion's role in
modernity, and moral philosophy. Above all, he wants students to
understand that religion is a vital reality. He would sanction school-
sponsored visits to services of worship so that students could
"experience" and "appreciate" ritual.

The reader will not find the plan stated quite so succinctly in the
book. Nord has an annoying way of stringing out his argument in
scattered fragments. He gets systematic about the curricular scheme only
in a few concluding pages, and he omits a clear explanation of why
religion is an integral aspect of liberal education. The zealous choir
already knows the reason, but what about the unpersuaded?

Nord, a professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, writes primarily about elementary and secondary schools,
but he offers some observations on higher education. One of his best
chapters is on college-level "religious studies," in which he argues
that religious studies courses misconstrue religion by focusing on
sociology and neglecting theology. He insists that teacher preparation
for religion classes in public schools include theology.

In developing his notion of "curricular neutrality," Nord takes on
issues of linguistics and philosophy, but his main concern is the
constitutional law produced by the Supreme Court's decisions on church
and state. He deals particularly with Establishment Clause rulings,
notably those-like Everson v. Board of Education (1947),
Abington Township School District v. Schempp (1963), and Lemon
v. Kurtzman (1971)-that require secular government be neutral both
among religions and between the religious and the nonreligious. Whether
by intention or misreading, Nord says, these decisions are used to
equate secular interest with the nonreligious, thereby stacking the deck
against religion in publicly funded schools. The lamentable result is
"religion-free education" that "indoctrinates" the young into viewing
secularism as the only frame of reference-a state of affairs neither
neutral nor fair.

This argument may have implications not only for the curriculum but also
for school prayer. Nord's "curricular neutrality" will likely give more
aid to advocates of a prayer or "religious equality" amendment than
comfort to strict separationists.

A tenet of Nord's theory holds that a neutral government must never take
"sides on matters of profound disagreement" within the nation. Since
school prayer is clearly a matter of profound disagreement, it seems to
follow that government should redeposit the question with local school
boards, where it rested before the Supreme Court entered the fray in
1962. Professor Nord may want to check his liberal credentials at the
door when he attends the next Church/State Section of the American
Academy of Religion.

Nord would excuse from his required religion classes students with
personal or parental objections-and believers may join nonbelievers in
refusing the classes, for Nord demands that the courses be rigorously
relativistic. The truth of no particular religion could be taught-only
the fact that religions claim truth. The claims of religion and science
would get the same weight, but nothing could be taught as the truth.
Nord does not consider that widespread opposition to vigorously taught
comparative religion might arise.

The Supreme Court in this book is less an active culprit in causing
religion-free education than a codifier of the effects of
secularization. Nord devotes more pages to the process of public school
secularization than his neutrality thesis requires and fewer than would
be necessary for a thorough cultural history of religion and education.
Sweeping generalizations abound. A briefer, more cogent summary of
public school secularization might have traced the repeated attempts
across the twentieth century to move the public schools in the direction
he desires.

Actually, Nord is not battling secularity, which is the
unavoidable condition of the American nation as a non-ecclesiastical
state. His target is secularism as an ideology. American public
schools have been secular since they emerged as common schools in the
1830s. For a century they certainly had close affinity with religion-
primarily religion refracted through Protestant moral and cultural
norms. But public schools in this country have rarely engaged in the
study of religion as such. Nord is proposing not so much a restoration
as the creation of something new in response to a shift from an enforced
Protestant culture to de facto religious pluralism and de jure
secularism.

Nord is perceptive in revealing secularism as an operative religion
within the educational and legal establishments. He is on point in
calling the multicultural education industry to task for its neglect of
religion as a cultural marker. He wisely cautions the "character
education" minions against the assumption that morality exists apart
from religion in the real world.

Contemporary America betrays a want of moral
seriousness. In designing the curriculum, in writing
textbooks, in educating teachers, we do not keep in mind
that education is first and foremost a moral enterprise.
Religion must have a central role in all of this. The idea
that students can be educated about how to live, what kind
of person to be, without taking religion seriously
is at least illiberal and quite possibly absurd.

The author correctly acknowledges that failure by the public schools to
deal with the linked issues of religion and moral education will lead
inevitably to a voucher system. Nord finds no constitutional problem
with vouchers; he is merely unsure they are socially sound. He worries
about the poor who still might not have enough resources to afford a
good school. Still, he sees vouchers as an option and holds them as a
club over public educators' heads.

The appeal for curriculum neutrality deserves serious consideration
among educators, politicians, and religious thinkers. Nord may not offer
a panacea, but he has an educational agenda more specific than usually
comes from those who bemoan the lack of religion in the public schools.
His program might not be right, but it is at least a program.

Elliot Wright is at work on a history of religion in American public
schools.